Brane/antibrane dynamics and KKLT stability

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the stability of de Sitter vacua in string theory, focusing on brane/antibrane dynamics within the KKLT model, and concludes that the anticipated stable vacua are not achievable.

Contribution

It provides a detailed effective field theory analysis confirming the instability of proposed de Sitter vacua in the KKLT framework.

Findings

Antibranes do not produce stable de Sitter vacua in KKLT.

Proper effective field theories reproduce KKLT's conclusions.

Metastable vacua are the only possible solutions in this context.

Abstract

String theory has few or no stable nonsupersymmetric or de Sitter vacua, only metastable ones. Antibranes are a simple source of supersymmetry breaking, as in the KKLT model, but various arguments have been given that these fail to produce the desired vacua. Proper analysis of the system requires identifying the correct effective field theories at various scales. We find that it reproduces the KKLT conclusions. This is an expanded version of a talk presented at SUSY 2015, Lake Tahoe.